Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!

I was up in Necedah, Wi. last Thursday for a quick shoot and was able to drive home that day on the backroads in the country! Sure, I could have taken the interstate to come back home and would have made it back in four hours, but I wanted to see some site and shoot some photos! I’ve always said that when time is critical and you have to get somewhere fast, the interstate road system here in the USA is wonderful! You can get from point A to point B in a very short time and for some road trips, you just have to get up and go! If you truly want to see the country, the two lane roads are the way to go! For me it’s always fun to travel through areas and towns that you’ve never been and just see the sights. It takes a bit more time, but is so worth it in my opinion! When I’ve got time, the backroads is where I want to travel!!!!

Here’s a few snaps from my backroad adventure from last Thursday afternoon in Wisconsin and Illinois!

I hope that you’re going to have a great week as always and thanks for checking out my work!!!! 🙂

Kev

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!!!!

It’s been more then 25 years ago that I started working with a local 80’s band called “The Rave“! We first started working together in the late 80’s to shoot some promo shots of the band and we had a lot of fun! The guys were up for about any crazy idea that I had at the time and we’d be serious in some of the shots and then real goofy in the others! The guys started to get a following and starting doing gigs in the Midwest because of their high energy shows! I was able to get out with them a few times to shoot some of the live shows and it was always a lot of fun! At some point the band broke up as most bands do! The guys all went their separate ways until just a few months ago! They all decided that they’d like to get together after all these years and do it again! They have been practicing for a few months and are just about ready to start playing some gigs!

Of course before you can start doing gigs, they need some promotional materials and that’s where I come in once again after all these years. We decided to do a shoot in a local warehouse and as they were before, the guys were up for more of my crazy ideas once again. We had a blast shooting and a lot of laughs and fun as well! I have no doubt that when the guys hit the stage once again, they’re going to kick it out like they did back in the day!

Here’s “The Rave”!!! Aaron, Jay, Jeff and Greg from the late 80’s and now again in 2014!

Here’s also a link for the bands Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1432997386921392/

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out my work and I hope that you have a great week to come!!!!

Kev

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!

Yes, the day that we set the clocks forward and start daylight savings time is the happiest day of the year for me! I’ve talked before how in the fall that when we set the clocks back to come off of DST, in my opinion it’s the most depressing day of the year! On that first day that the clocks are set back and the sun is going down at 4:30pm it just kills me!!! The days are shorting in the winter time and then to also have it getting dark at 4:30pm is just horrible!!!!! Yesterday to have the sun going down after 7:00pm and knowing that the days will be getting longer is a wonderful thing!!! I for one will have a smile on my face even more then I do now!!!!

The other really nice thing besides DST is that it looks like winter might be on the way out in Central Illinois! We’ve had a very long winter that I’ve talked about way too much in my Monday morning promos this year! It looks like we’re going to have more normal temperatures in the next few weeks and that is a welcome change! More sunshine and warmer temps are never a bad thing!!!!!

Here’s a couple of snaps of winter going bye-bye. The snow is melting and that is a very good thing!!!

I hope that you have a wonderful week as always and thanks again for checking out my work!!!!!!

Kev

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Monday morning greetings from Santa Fe, New Mexico!!!

Wow, the Super Bowl, yawn!!! The Super Bowl commercials, yawn!!! For all the build up and the hype for the big game, the NFL laid a big goose egg! Blow out games are never entertaining unless your team is the one that’s blowing out the opposition!!! I have a feeling that Animal Plant’s “Puppy Bowl” got better ratings then that yawner!!!!! For the most part the commercials were bad as well! It was funny becuase every-time I would watch a bad one, I would say to the room, “There’s another four million dollars down the drain”! Yes, 30 second spots were four million a pop! Scary but true!!!!

It’s the first road trip of the year and we’ve got a great spot to be shooting, Santa Fe, NM!!! We’ll be shooting for Modern Quilts Unlimited magazine and it should be a lot of fun! The colors and textures out here are inspiring and hopefully we’ll be able to bring that out in our photos!!!!

I’m still banging my drum about lighting!!! It’s been amazing to me over the last five or so years how we in the advertising world have gotten away from doing lighting on people and products. I know that this is an old school thing because back in the day you had to do lighting becuase of the cameras and film. With today’s modern digital cameras, it’s not necessary to do lighting to get a good photo, but we are missing out on the mood that can be created with lighting! There is a drama and mood that is created when you light up a subject and most of the photos that I’m shooting for clients these days lack that dramatic look. There are a host of reasons from our new cameras, time is money and budgets have been squeezed, to “It’s good enough”! It’s sad to see because I think about the lack of impact that photos are missing today!

Here’s a shot that we did last week for my friends at Simformotion and this is one of my clients that does see the need to have photos with impact for their products. Taking a little bit of time and doing some creative and dramatic lighting, we are able to take a product that might not be all that exciting and turn it into an interesting and attention getting photograph! Hopefully as time goes on, more and more clients will want their products and people to stand out and have impact!!!

It’s time to get busy and Santa Fe is waiting, I’ve got lighting and photography to do!!!! 🙂

I hope that you have a great week as always and thanks for taking the time to check out my work!!!

Kev

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Arctic cold Monday morning greetings to one and all from the frozen city of Peoria!!!!

From my intro can you tell that we here in the Midwest and Central Illinois are sick of winter and ready for spring? If not, we are! The last couple of winters in Peoria have been fairly mild and personally that type of winter isn’t too upsetting to me and others! We’d have a few cold days and then we’d hit some nicer weather in the 30’s to 40’s and that was pretty darn nice! This year over the last month or so we’ve been rocked with these extreme polar blasts time and time again and this morning is no exception! With temperatures in in the -10 range and wind chill’s in the -20 and below area, this winter is getting old real fast!!!! Having spent two weeks in Hawaii in December, I’m ready to get the heck out of here again and avoid some of this nasty cold weather again!!!! We’ll see!!!!

This weekend we were able to head South of Peoria and hit St. Louis and enjoy a little bit of a reprieve from winters blast!!! Sad to say that even they won’t be able to avoid this cold today!!!! Here’s a couple snaps of my from Sunday at the Arch and it was gorgeous with temperatures in the high 50’s and a very nice sunny day!!! It almost made me think of spring!!!!!

For my friends North of the Mason-Dixon Line, here’s hoping that you are going to stay warm the next couple of days!!!! For those of you South and West of the MD Line, we don’t want to hear it!!!!

Have a great week as always and stay warm!!!! 🙂

Kev

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Monday morning peoria greetings to one and all!

Some of my friends might have the day off for the Martin Luther King holiday and some of my friends like me will be working!

I’m getting back into the flow of things work wise and had a number of shoots this past week! This has always been a slow time of the year for me, so any work is always a nice excuse to get out of the house!!!! I’m usually working on the computer and trying to get things caught up and finished up for 2013. As winter rolls along and things start to warm up and green up, that’s when things will start to get busy for me!

I was able to get out on Sunday morning before all of the NFL games in the afternoon and shoot a couple of shots of Peoria! We’ve been having these cold snaps that come into the area, but today it was pretty nice with the temperature in the high 30’s and sunny! We will all take more days like that!!!!! Here’s one of my snaps of Peoria and the city was looking good today!!!!!

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out my work and I hope that you have a wonderful week!!!

Kev

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